It is amazing that the Times has such extensive coverage on the very morning of the attack on Russia.
Homer and I were discussing this the other day and I figured that the artillery barrage which started at 0315 would have been at 1915 Pacific Time on the 21st. Afterwards when I was thinking about it I realized that I was using Greenwich Mean Time to make that calculation and the Soviet frontier would actually have been in a later time zone (GMT+2). If the Germans also exercised Daylight Savings Time like the Americans and British did, that would put the start of the war with Russia at about 1715 Pacific Time, 2015 Eastern. So basically, around supper time last night, well within press time for the late edition.
There is not much news from the front lines during these first hours of the invasion. I was interested to learn, as I prepared subsequent posts, that the main stories about the eastern front will originate with Daniel T. Brigham in Berne, Switzerland. During the invasions of Poland, Norway and France and now in North Africa there were a few articles written with bylines like “with the British Forces” or even “with the German Army.” (Example: Look up Harold Denny in the index on my profile. That guy likes to show up where the action is.) During Barbarossa there may not be any stories filed by journalists embedded with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army. The Germans won’t be eager for the outside world to learn about some of their policies related treatment of civilians in occupied territory and the Red Army is too busy trying to survive to accommodate foreign newspaper men. Thus, Berne. I guess neutral Switzerland serves as a sort of international clearing house for information from the Eastern Front. It will be interesting to see how accurate and/or timely the news is from that source.